knights going naturally zigzag; but a host of plebeian pawns, every one fit for a possible royalty, and therefore to be used shrewdly, or else annihilated as soon as practicable. True, the game would not last forever; but after him the deluge.
Our age has forgotten even the meaning of the word Fronde; but here also the French and Flemish histories run parallel, and the Frondeurs, like the Gueux, were children of a sarcasm. The Counsellor Bachaumont one day ridiculed insurrectionists, as resembling the boys who played with slings (frondes) about the streets of Paris, but scattered at the first glimpse of a policeman. The phrase organized the party. Next morning all fashions were à la fronde,—hats, gloves, fans, bread, and ballads; and it cost six years of civil war to pay for the Counsellor's facetiousness.
That which was, after all, the most remarkable characteristic of these wars might be guessed from this fact about the fashions. The Fronde was preëminently "the War of the Ladies." Educated far beyond the Englishwomen of their time, they took a controlling share, sometimes ignoble, as often noble, always powerful, in the affairs of the time. It was not merely a courtly gallantry which flattered them with a hollow importance. De Retz, in his Memoirs, compares the women of his age with Elizabeth of England. A Spanish ambassador once congratulated Mazarin on obtaining temporary repose. "You are mistaken," he replied, "there is no repose in France, for I have always women to contend with. In Spain, women have only love-affairs to employ them; but here we have three who are capable of governing or overthrowing great kingdoms: the Duchess de Longueville, the Princess Palatine, and the Duchess de Chevreuse." And there were others as great as these; and the women who for years outwitted Mazarin and outgeneralled Condé are deserving of a stronger praise than they have yet obtained, even from the classic and courtly Cousin.
What men of that age eclipsed or equalled the address and daring of those delicate and highborn women? What a romance was their ordinary existence! The Princess Palatine gave refuge to Mme. de Longueville when that alone saved her from sharing the imprisonment of her brothers Condé and Conti,—then fled for her own life, by night, with Rochefoucauld. Mme. de Longueville herself, pursued afterwards by the royal troops, wished to embark in a little boat, on a dangerous shore, during a midnight storm so wild that not a fisherman could at first be found to venture forth; the beautiful fugitive threatened and implored till they consented; the sailor who bore her in his arms to the boat let her fall amid the furious surges; she was dragged senseless to the shore again, and, on the instant of reviving, demanded to repeat the experiment; but as they utterly refused, she rode inland beneath the tempest, and travelled for fourteen nights before she could find another place of embarkation.
Madame de Chevreuse rode with one attendant from Paris to Madrid, fleeing from Richelieu, remaining day and night on her horse, attracting perilous admiration by the womanly loveliness which no male attire could obscure. From Spain she went to England, organizing there the French exiles into a strength which frightened Richelieu; thence to Holland, to conspire nearer home; back to Paris, on the minister's death, to form the faction of the Importants; and when the Duke of Beaufort was imprisoned, Mazarin said, "Of what use to cut off the arms while the head remains?" Ten years from her first perilous escape, she made a second, dashed through La Vendée, embarked at St. Malo for Dunkirk, was captured by the fleet of the Parliament, was released by the Governor of the Isle of Wight, unable to imprison so beautiful a butterfly, reached her port at last, and in a few weeks was intriguing at Liège again.
The Duchess de Bouillon, Turenne's sister, purer than those we have named,
